Pigeon Spins Featuring an Interview with Adai Song

Adai Song - The Bloom Project

Adai Song (a.k.a. EDM persona ADÀI) is an electropop singer, producer, DJ, and songwriter based in NYC and Beijing, pioneering C-pop by blending Chinese and Pan-Asian music with electronic elements. Her new album "The Bloom Project" is a Grammy consideration candidate in the "Best Global Music Album" category, featuring a feminist reinterpretation of 1920s Shanghai "shidaiqu" - a fusion of Chinese folk and Western jazz - reimagined with contemporary EDM and traditional instruments.

Adai Song (also known as her EDM persona ADÀI) is an internationally acclaimed electropop singer, producer, DJ, and songwriter based in NYC and Beijing, currently exploring the concept of C-pop by blending the roots of Chinese and Pan-Asian music with her unique electronic touch. A Recording Academy member and New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA)-funded artist, she is also a faculty member at Berklee NYC.

Adai has established herself as a major-label singer-songwriter and producer in the Chinese pop music industry, achieving over 70 million streams across platforms with frequent placements on indie pop charts. Her work has been synced in films and TV shows, and featured in major music festivals and popular video games like Arknights.

As a producer and songwriter, she has collaborated with major industry players including SONY/ATV, UMG, Warner Chappell China, and Tencent Music Entertainment.

Growing up with classical violin training and diverse musical influences, Adai wrote her first song at 12 and self-taught guitar and keyboard. After graduating from UCLA, Adai started her career as a multi-hyphenate artist. Her breakthrough came in 2018 when she was selected as runner-up in Tencent Musicians' prestigious "The Force" Music Competition (原力计划), earning her the opportunity to release her debut album Cyan Black <青黑>. She subsequently gained widespread recognition through her appearances on Youku's acclaimed music competition show Chuang (这！就是原创).

Interview with Adai Song

What inspired the creation of The Bloom Project, and how does it reinterpret 1920s Shanghai "shidaiqu" for a modern audience?

When I first revisited the music of 1920s and 1930s Shanghai, I didn’t just hear melodies; I heard the beginnings of Chinese modernity. Those songs marked the first fusion between Chinese folk and Western jazz, the moment Chinese women’s voices were first recorded and distributed globally. But what fascinated me most was what wasn’t there: those songs were all written and produced by men, even when sung from a woman’s perspective. Women were mostly performers, not authors.

So The Bloom Project became a kind of reclamation. I wanted to reimagine those voices a hundred years later, from a modern woman’s standpoint, both musically and conceptually. Instead of being sung about, I wanted to sing as. I rebuilt those songs through the lens of today’s production using EDM, house, and experimental pop to mirror how femininity and authorship sound in the digital age.

How do you approach blending traditional Chinese and Pan-Asian musical elements with contemporary EDM in your work?

It’s all about coexistence. I grew up hearing Peking Opera at my grandparents’ house and Billboard hits on the radio, so those sound worlds have always lived side by side in my head. When I produce, I don’t think of guzheng or erhu as “traditional instruments”; I think of them as textures. They can sit next to 808s or modular synths if you design the space right. I might hear a guzheng line and imagine it floating over a UK garage groove, as in Wuxi Tune, or take a Yunnan folk melody and rebuild it into a bass-driven house track, as in River Run. I also collaborate with artists who grew up playing these instruments to bring their own sonic languages to the picture. I think the challenge is not to make the instruments exotic, but to make them belong.

As both a performer and producer, how do you balance creative control across singing, songwriting, and production?

For me, production is an extension of songwriting. I don’t see them as separate roles. A synth tone can tell the same story as a lyric, and the way a reverb decays can carry emotion just like a vocal phrase.

Singing has been natural to me since day one, so I never had to think about how to sing, just feel it. Songwriting came a bit after, probably after I started violin training. Melodies randomly came to my head, and I had to learn how to extend them into songs. Production is the thing that involves more technical things to learn. So it took me a while to learn how to make a sound I imagined in my head come to life.

Now, after doing all of them for a while, they're all second nature. It's like being both the architect and the builder of my own creative space, working alongside my talented collaborators.

Can you describe the feminist themes explored throughout The Bloom Project?

At its core, the album is about authorship, about women reclaiming the right to define their own narratives. Many of the original shidaiqu songs from Shanghai’s golden era depicted women as objects of beauty or longing. I wanted to flip that script.

For instance, in “Make Way,” which was originally translated into English as “Rose, Rose, I Love You,” I rewrote it from a first-person perspective. It’s no longer about a woman being admired; it’s about her asserting her presence, saying “I am beautiful, but that doesn’t mean I’m yours.” Similarly, “Wild Thorny Molihua” reimagines the jasmine flower, long a symbol of purity, as fierce and defiant. Underneath its delicate top line is a dubstep-inspired beat; it’s softness with a backbone.

How has your classical training influenced your approach to electronic and pop music?

Starting violin at age three gave me an intuitive sense of melody and form, even though I initially hated practicing. That discipline built the foundation for everything I do now. I still think in melodic arcs and dynamic movement, even when I’m building a dance track.

Classical music taught me to listen deeply, to understand how space and tension shape emotion. Those same principles apply to mixing and sound design. Whether I’m writing a string line or sculpting a synth pad, it’s still about phrasing, balance, and breath.

What was the most challenging aspect of reimagining historical musical styles for a modern, global audience?

Expectation. In Asia, traditional instruments are often used in nostalgic or cinematic contexts. In the West, “Asian” sounds are still tied to stereotypes — restaurant music or movie scores. The Bloom Project doesn’t fit into either box.

The hardest part was making these two sonic worlds — East and West, old and new — truly belong together. That meant not treating traditional sounds as decoration, but as equal voices in the mix.

How do your experiences performing and producing in both NYC and Beijing shape your artistic perspective?

Beijing gave me roots; New York gave me wings. Both cities are massive creative ecosystems that require you to find your own way through the crowd. I had to learn how to navigate, to find the people I trust and the communities that truly support me. That process taught me not only collaboration, but also discernment in how to protect my creative space and keep doing what I do.

The Beijing scene taught me how to respect musical lineage, while the NYC scene taught me to experiment without permission since no one knows exactly what your root is, or where you’re going to. Living between those cities helped me find my voice, somewhere between tradition and disruption, heritage and innovation.

Which collaborators or mentors have had the greatest impact on your development as an artist?

Every collaborator leaves a fingerprint. Early in my career, my first producer Tian Liang told me, “You’ve got a producer in you — make your next album yourself.” That line stuck with me. At Berklee NYC, Rachel Alina became both mentor and later colleague, helping me shape my sonic identity and later inviting me to teach alongside her.

I’ve also worked with incredible co-producers like SHI, Jack Choi, Electron, and Yuanming Zhang, and Malcolm Welles, each with different strengths, from Chinese ensemble fusion, synthwave precision, to mixing and navigating music landscape in different cultures. They help me stretch my imagination while still staying true to my instincts.

How does your dual identity as Adai Song and ADÀI inform your creative choices and public persona?

Under my EDM persona ADÀI, I collaborate with producers worldwide, from Germany to Russia, Italy to India, building high-energy electronic landscapes. Under Adai Song, I explore intimacy, lyricism, and cultural narrative.

Both sides feed each other. ADÀI gives me technical fluency; Adai Song gives me emotional grounding. Together, they represent two halves of one creative ecosystem.

What do you hope listeners take away from The Bloom Project, both musically and thematically?

I hope it reminds people that tradition and modernity aren’t opposites; they’re a conversation. The past isn’t something to preserve behind glass; it’s something to remix, to speak through.

If a listener walks away feeling empowered or hearing something they’ve never heard before, maybe a familiar melody reborn inside a futuristic soundscape, then the bloom has already begun.

(•)> That's all, Folks! Check out Adai Song on the Pigeon Spins Playlist